Thames TV

It's not that they can't afford their own studios, it's just that their business is production and not facilities.

Many Thames/Pearson programmes have been made at Teddington since 1996 when they sold it, they had ann access deal over the biggest studio.

Pop Idol was made at Teddington until the later rounds when it moved to Fountain TV in Wembley (orignal home of WWTBAM), a far bigger studio.

The Bill and Family Affairs are made in Merton, South London

Pearson TV was essentially Thames TV added to several other companies - Grundy (Neighbours etc), SelecTV (Goodnight Sweetheart, Birds of a feather etc), Regent (15 to 1), All American (Baywatch and the original Freemantle company). They had a big transmission business transmitting about 50-100 3rd party channels from their HQ. They also owned something like 75% of the worlds gameshow formats.

Pearson PLC wanted to get rid of the TV arm, so spun it off and it merged with CLT-UFA to form the RTL Group. Which was later renamed FreemantleMedia. All Pearson branding was removed because they were nothing to do with Pearson any more, but the RTL, Thames and Grundy names were retained although the dominant company name in the UK is Thames.


Details on http://www.pearsontv.com/ and http://www.rtlgroup.com/1532.htm

Don't forget that Thames also produces This Is Your Life for BBC1 as well! Let's hope they get their franchise back in 2008, Carlton is slowly bleeding ITV1 dry! Carlton was only given the franchise because Thames **** ed Mrs Thatcher off when their Death On The Rock programme, I do hate that woman SO much!

Yes - Teddington Studios was eventually sold by Thames after they ceased to be an ITV franchise holder - though as you say it remains Thames' spiritual home, and still houses some of their productions. It is now owned and run by the Barnes Media Trust I believe. It is still a very popular studio centre - the Peter Snow / Philippa Forrester Tomorrow's World studio was based there ISTR (Sadly it wasn't made at TV Centre... I hear rumours that this may change with the next series...)

As for Family Affairs - I believe it is now, as you say, based in Merton, with The Bill. However Family Affairs was originally based at HDS Studios in Hayes - also home of the short-lived 'Channel East' satellite channel.

BTW - it may be of vague interest but I believe that Thames News was based at Thames' other studio centre in Euston.

Was this closed down after the loss of the franchise - or sold off to be run as a different facilities company?

I attended an auction at Thames Euston Road soon after the loss of it's franchise (can't remember exactly when). Absolutly anything could be bid for, a studio was filled with racks and racks of equipment, and every single office was open and viewers were free to wander around the whole complex and bid. Seemed a bit odd wandering into the pres. area and seeing the old in-vision con studio.

As far as I can remember, the only ex-Thames equipment still operational was the MARC machines and MII VT's (used for automated commercial playout) which were redeployed to UK Gold which was being TX'd from Euston Road at that time.

God - MII - there's a blast from the past.

Last I heard Anglia were still TXing and editing Anglia News East and West from MII and MARC cart machines - though they had moved to DVC Pro for their location cameras, and had put DVC Pro laptop editors into the regional offices.

I remember MII was a nightmare when Look East and Anglia covered events (mainly royal rota stuff) on a pooled basis. Cos Look East was Beta (not Beta SP - Norwich couldn't afford SP tape stock...) and Anglia were MII you couldn't share tapes - everything had to played out via BT lines and recorded. Things got really nasty when Cambridge opened - cos it didn't have any lines in or out - luckily Cambs Uni were based on MII...

I know those MARCs well

When UK Gold left Euston it went to Molinaire in Soho and those MARCs went to Teddington (god knows how they got them there, they are huge things) along with lots of other Thames pres kit. There they were redeployed on UK Living and BBC World Europe. I worked there for a while.

They were in use till early 1996 when Thames moved... the equipment, and the MII tape format were obsolete by then.

Thame Euston, along with most of the Euston centre (except the tower) were knocked down in the mid 90's. Roughly in the location where Thames was is now home to Fox Kids. Capital Radio was next door under the tower, virtually nothing of the old capital building is left now.




(Edited by Larry Scutta at 12:20 am on Jan. 24, 2002)

I used to know several of the transmission bods who were there at the end of Thames.

After midnight they'd gone off air, the red phone rang with a message of thanks and goodbye. Then everyone went off to the goodbye party.... except one person who had to stay behind and look after UK Gold!

Pop Idol's last 50 was at Teddington, but the last 10 is at London Studios

But Thames no longer own Teddington! Just in case you thought they did

No, I knew, but Pop Idol was done there.

Yes, so did I. I was just pointing out that Thames don't own the studios, they were using them - they showed you on pop idol anyway.